In response to Brighton Pride’s statement that it would not accept tickets from secondary sites, a spokesperson from ticket site viagogo said: “viagogo is a marketplace and doesn’t buy or sell tickets. viagogo provides a platform for third party sellers to sell tickets to event goers. viagogo does not set ticket prices, sellers set their own prices, which may be above or below the original face value.

“The tickets sold on viagogo’s platform are genuine tickets that have been sold on by the original ticket purchaser in good faith.

“Event organisers sometimes make claims that they will deny entry to people who have purchased resold tickets. These types of entry restrictions are highly unfair and in our view, unenforceable and illegal. Therefore, as with all tickets on our platform, viagogo customers should feel confident that they will gain entry to the event, and that is why we back every ticket with the viagogo guarantee.”

A Brighton Pride spokesperson said: “Brighton Pride CIC is a not for profit community interest company than run all its events as fundraisers for local community groups and good causes.

“We sell tickets to all our events as PDF digital e-tickets.

“The issue with the viagogo model is that unscrupulous third party sellers can sell multiple copies of the same e-ticket so the purchaser has no idea if they have the only copy or even if the text on the e-ticket has been edited by the seller.

“Every e-ticket we sell carries the ticket buyers name and they need to be present, with ID, when exchanging the e-ticket for a wristband.

“The ‘viagogo guarantee’ is clearly unenforceable when the third party could have edited the ticket information or sold multiple copies.”